Terry Klenske is a traditional trucking company owner with a non-traditional diversification: An intermodal transloading facility.

Ask Terry Klenske what kind of company Dalton Trucking is, and he’ll likely describe it as a throwback to the carriers of the 1960s and 1970s. For example, the company’s 200 trucks are largely older and are kept running in a fully staffed shop. The shop does everything from overhauling engines to rebuilding transmissions to fabricating parts for older trucks. Even the carrier’s regular hauls – construction materials, equipment and bulk products like cement and sand – are standard fare.

“We have two basic businesses – we haul bulk materials, and we’re one of the largest low-bed carriers in the state,” Klenske says. “That’s what people think of when you mention Dalton Trucking.”

On a recent Wednesday at the company’s headquarters in Fontana, Calif., workers were converting a sleeper into a daycab on the company’s back lot, repairing dump trailers in its aluminum shop and resurrecting a wrecked power unit in another building. Klenske, whose office doesn’t even have a computer, talks about finally hiring a financial director for the company. “We’ve never really had one.”

But the seemingly unsophisticated atmosphere at the carrier is misleading: Dalton Trucking is at the forefront of intermodal shipping in a way that few carriers in the country are.

In 2000, Klenske decided he needed to diversify his business. Trucking rates were depressed, and there was overcapacity. The company’s core hauls weren’t as profitable. “Trucking didn’t look all that attractive,” Klenske says. “I needed a hedge against the other things we were doing.” Due to Dalton Trucking’s location, in North America’s busiest freight corridor, intermodal was an obvious opportunity – but not in the usual way.

The carrier approached the Union Pacific railroad about building a rail spur onto 12 acres on the UP line near Interstate 10 in Fontana. The facility created the only public warehouse at UP’s West Colton rail yard, an enormous intermodal stop in the heart of California’s freight-rich Inland Empire. The area has one of the largest concentrations of distribution centers in North America and is a stopping point for much of the freight headed into Los Angeles.